Friday, June 18, 2010

Play Therapy

That term sounds really sexy to me. "Sexy" is a term that some publicists use about a good story worth pitching to a journalist. Who thought of putting those two words together? Who thought of this idea in the first place? I don't know and I guess I don't really care but all I know is that my kids really need it.

I first heard about it when Logan was starting special needs preschool. The school system used the term "play counseling" or just "counseling," but it seems to me that, for any child under 4, counseling is therapy through play.

My kids seem to benefit from play therapy. I only wish we had more time to do as much play therapy as possible especially now that I see that anxiety is really bothering them. For the little one, he seemed to have social anxiety. He does like being around other children but only if it is a very small group like say three. It can be a larger group if the group meets daily. Otherwise things are hard for him. He easily shies away when more kids show up at a park.

How am I supposed to go to Disney World? Even with the disability pass to skip lines, we still have the crowds to deal with. This is why we have promised ourselves to stay in the park no more than four hours a day. I hope we can keep to our plan.

Back to play therapy... I have been going nuts about it because I am determined to deal with Spencer's anxiety while he is still little (3). I even bought an Asian American family doll set for his therapist to use during her sessions with him. (YES, THERE IS ONE and they are not wearing kimonos- because Duh, Asian Americans don't wear kimonos everyday!) I have also bought more games to help him do interactive game playing with friends and be more comfortable around them.

I think it can definitely help him but we are still testing things out and I have been very avid about making playdates with just about anyone I can. I practically wear a sign around my neck saying, "Please come over and play with my son." Hopefully I can help him make some friends this way. I need to be very proactive because in September, he will be going to school outside of our neighborhood and so seeing his classmates afterschool on weekdays will be nearly impossible. Hopefully we can make more dates. I wouldn't mind if he had three playdates a week. He really needs the one on one interaction as much as possible if he is ever going to make it in the playground.

I also try to play with Spencer when we go to the park. In our park, the jungle gym and slides are on top of a large sandbox. Last year, this wasn't really an issue for him but this year it is. He hates the sand. He has regressed with tactile sensitivity which is really sad because we had really made a lot of progress last year. It takes a while to get him used to the sandbox and I usually have to drag him there and cheerfully ignore his protests. Once there, he might be able to play on the sand but playing with the sand is doubly hard for him.

I found a sand mold set made of numbers on the internet recently and thought I had discovered gold since he is obsessed with numbers. As soon as it came in the mail, I took it out and took out my stolen sand from the park and started to play with it with Spencer. He was squirmish but the numbers held him attention and desire. However, when I took him to the park to play with it, he started to do okay and there was even a prospective same-age friend that wanted to play with him as well.

Those first few minutes were great. The two of them molded numbers out of sand and they were happy because I sat there and helped them and said things like, "Oh, you made 15," and for Spencer, because he is so crazy about math, I said, "Oh, look, you made 100." You would think that I struck it rich and became "Therapy Mom of the Year" but then something happened and everything was ruined.

The Number Sand Molds were way too interesting. Kids as old as 7 would come up to us and take the molds and make more numbers. Younger kids did too. The little ones would grab things and walk away and in my park, sharing is really encouraged especially if you have plenty of number molds, but I really wanted to just say out loud, "Please don't take those away. It only costs 10 dollars but I have to spend 25 dollars from that store to get free shipping. Also, Spencer will have a fit if he lost the two "zero" molds to make his favorite "100" number." And I really wanted to tell the other older kids, "Please go away, my son is not ready for such a big crowd. We just want one kid with him and now he's gone because you scared him off."

Who would understand me if I said this? Do I have to tell everyone about my kid's psychological problems to get a little bit of space. It's an open park space so it's not like I can take a few square feet and section it off for my own therapy session and only let "select" children in. By the way, while I have talked about my kids' special needs, I have never told people to not play with us but now because of that, it is now so hard to do therapeutic play with my son in the park.

Another problem is that children are attracted to me. While other parents might get on the sand occasionally to play with their kid, I sit on the sand with my son because if I don't, he may likely leave. So I sit with him. I play with him. I talk about how great he was at packing the sand in the mold. I make "birthday cakes" out of sand for him. We sing and pretend to blow out the candles. The good part about this besides helping him be comfortable is that other kids like to see this and start to come by and try to play with me and by default with Spencer too. However, sometimes, too many of them come and they try to talk and play with me as if I was their teacher. At times, Spencer has gotten overwhelmed and has left me and I find myself stuck playing with other people's children. It's a pitiful sight.

This also happens with bubble-blowing in the park. He loves it but too many kids crowd around him and his bubble set and then he just ends up wanting to leave.

No more bubbles for us. I only bring them to a park where I don't know the kids. There is really no way around it. It just attracts too much attention. Other parents probably don't bring them to the park for the same reason I do. Because other people's kids end up using all your bubble stuff. Everyone but your kid. Bubbles will only have to be for private backyards for now.

Additionally,while I will continue to bring the number sand molds to my park, I will only bring a few and I will have be more politefully stingy and keep them very close to me. I am sure that I might seem odd to people but once parents and babysitters see the number molds, hopefully they will understand that my sand molds are not like those that frequently found and easily bought in a store. Hopefully, I won't look like a crazy person but I'm sure I already do.

I am also going to lower my voice and attract less attention when playing with Spencer. This is very hard for me. I am usually loud especially when I am being a Therapy Mom. I clap too loud. I say "Wow" way too often. These things are too attractive for young children. They want to praise too so they come sit next to me and show me their creations. I will have to tone it down. Hopefully that will attract just a couple of kids to play with Spencer and not a mob.

I am also going to tone down the play therapy thing altogether. I am constantly spying for playdates and thinking of ways for Spencer to play interactively with another child. It is somewhat consuming and I should really give it a rest. In the past week, I have spent so much money on toys and even organizing supplies to make it easier for all of us to find different games to play with Spencer.

I guess I am overdoing it partially because I am really afraid. I know it is so unhealthy but I want to avoid medication in the future if it is possible. I can't stand to see him idle in the park and not play functionally while he's there. I don't want him to become too obsessive about order and routine because he is so used to a structured life. I want him to be happy to be with people, young and old, boy or girl, small groups and big groups. People are messy and lovely and give you joy and give you pain. Even though he shies away from it, the times that he hasn't and has done well with other children, I see great happiness in his face. It is worth the effort. I just have to not let it drive me crazy in the process.

Photo: We took the boys to the Staten Island Children's Museum where there is a quiet room for building blocks and playing kitchen. I kept telling Logan to build a city, a skill I know he can do very well but he just wouldn't do it until I sat down and did it with him. Whatever building I did was no match to his once he started to join in on the play. He's got so much potential, I guess I just have to drag him into things to get started. Sometimes I watch parents go to a museum or park with a book in hand and try their hand at reading while they take sneak peeks at their child playing on his own. I wonder if I will ever see this day. For now, I am trying very hard to fill Lucy Miller's prescription of playing with your child as much as he receives therapy from a professional. I understand her point now more than ever.

In case you are interested, here are some cool things that I found for helping my three year old learn to play with others.

1. Doctor Kit2. Painting3. Zingo (but played not competitively)4. Kitchen with foods. It's best to have tables and chairs and utensils too and if all of the foods and utensils are neatly organized, then Spencer becomes more creative. (I'm thinking of creating a menu for him to make a pretend restaurant.)5. Making instant pudding. Giving two whisks and letting them stir together and bump each other and then hopefully they'll eat it together.6. Don't Break the Ice (a game) Spencer's therapist, the genius, decided to number the ice blocks and this helped Spencer follow through the game.7. I Never Forget a Face (matching game, I love anything that helps him look at children's faces intently)8. Preschool Lotto Game (we just got this and haven't started but it looks good. Very good quality, good graphics. the eeBoo products seem very well made.)9. Birthday party. I bought some stryofoam blocks to make a birthday cake but I have this feeling I will fail at this miserably. I should have just bought it. 10. Matching Game. This is available pretty much everywhere.11. Balloon Toss. It took a while but Spencer finally understood that the object of the game was to toss it up in the air and not to let it fall on the ground.12. Bowling. We joined www.kidsbowlfree.com and now we just pay for shoe rental to pay for the kids' bowling. We found that Spencer loves bowling and that Logan is quite the sore loser. We can work on that through bowling.13. Construction Set. I found some low cost tool belts and construction vests from Michaels in the sale bin. They also had foam construction hats ($2.99) where you can stick foam stickers on them. I am hoping this might entice Spencer to put on a foam hat to pretend to be a construction worker because he hates hats. They even had the "caution-do not cross" tape which I just had to buy.

If you have any ideas for a three and six year old, please feel free to put them in the comment list or send me an email. I am absolutely obsessed with finding good things for him.

1 comment:

Sheila
said...

Hi, I came across your blog as I was surfing the internet. I also have a 3 1/2 year old that had alot of sensory issue but has significantly improved through my implementing my own play-at-home therapy. I chuckled as I read the part about trying to find playmates because that's me too:) Anyways, what really helped to improve my son's communication and social skill were puppets. Melissa and Doug make fabulous puppets.

I also found the Fisher-Price little people figurines were helpful in imitating scenarios. For instance, we had a playground set and we would act out using the FP figurines on how to talk to other children. I was lucky to find a whole collection of FP little people on Craigslist, saved a lot of money!

It's Not All Sadness & Despair

In October '08, I found myself in the emergency room wondering why my life was so awful that I couldn't even breathe freely. Was I having a heartattack? asthma? costrochondritis?

No, I was just having a Grade A panic attack. The first one you get, you'll always remember because you have no idea it's a panic attack. You just feel like you might be dying.

But dying, or even thinking of dying is not an option for me. I have two young kids with special needs (ADHD and PDD-NOS) and taking care of them has made me feel pathetic, estatic, lucky, unlucky, proud, ashamed, anxious, and depressed.

After a long road to recovery, my panic episodes have been alleviated somewhat but the challenges remain. I have learned tons of things along the way and I like writing it all down. The stories are sad, funny, and sometimes incendiary but the crazy part is that they are all real.